Sep 15, 2014

The new Ubuntu Touch operating system from Canonical will power the new Meizu MX4 phone and it will be out in December, according to the latest information posted by the Chinese company. We now take a closer look at this new phone to see how it will hold up with an Ubuntu experience.

Canonical hasn't provided any kind of information about a timetable for the launch of the new Ubuntu phone from Meizu, and even the information that we have right now has been posted initially on an Italian blog of the Chinese company. Basically, no one is saying anything officially, but that's not really the point. The new Meizu MX4 was announced just a couple of weeks ago and many Ubuntu users have asked themselves if this is the phone that will eventually feature the upcoming Ubuntu Touch. It looks like that is the case, so we now take a closer look at this powerful handset.

Meizu MX4 is a powerhouse

This is the first phone built by Meizu to feature the new MediaTek MT6595 SoC (system on chip), which is actually a very powerful solution. It's an octa-core, meaning that it's a processor with eight cores, although it's a little bit different from what you would expect. It actually comes with a quad-core 2.2 GHz Cortex A17 processor and a quad-core 1.7 GHz A7 processor, and the devs say that it uses a technology called CorePilot that shifts processes from core to core. This means that the performance of the phone is much better and the battery life is improved dramatically. "We have made the MX4 compatible with 5 network types across 13 different frequency bands. The MX4 can make use of the latest TD-LTE and FDD-LTE 4G networks, FDD-LTE reaching a download speed of 150 Mbps, almost 6 times that of the previous-generation device," says Meizu on their official website.

Also, Meizu MX4 comes with the 802.11ac Wi-Fi protocol, which registers Internet speeds of up 433 Mbps, a 3100 mAh battery from Sony, a 20.7 mega-pixel SONY premium IMX220 Exmor RS sensor, the NXP Smart PS audio processor, and the PowerVR H6200 GPU. It also comes in two versions, with 16 and 32 GB. The best feature seems to be the new screen, which features the Nega liquid crystal technology developed with Sharp and JDI that has a size of 5.36 (15:9 ration), 1100:1 contrast ratio, and 500cd/m² for the led backlight. We are still waiting for an official confirmation from Canonical, but this already looks like a great system to use for Ubuntu Touch. There is no word about dual-boot or anything along these lines from Meizu, but that remains to be determined.